Indeed, Oracle's power play to try to force HP-UX customers using Oracle software on to Solaris/SPARC resulted in us taking a long hard look at Linux on x86-64; and deciding that was the best path forward.

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Customers aren't stupid. It's blatantly obvious what Oracle's motivation is, and everyone I've talked to in the industry knows it. It's a direct shot at HP, aimed at sinking HP-UX. HP-UX + Oracle on Itanium is a very popular platform in the high-end monolithic database market, and Oracle is salivating at the idea if trying to convert some of that to Solaris + Oracle on SPARC.

If Itanium is dying it's only because Oracle just killed it. They're hurting HP and pissing off their own customers by cutting off development for a platform that many companies invested in, not just in the past, but new generations of servers being developed and solid right now.

Well screw them. We'll just go with x86-64. They can't kill that platform without committing corporate suicide. Now if you'll excuse me I need to go order a Dell server and try to suppress the vomiting.

I was more thinking let his boss know what you think. Lacy seems to be the head of the traffic department, so perhaps this:

Secretary of Transportation
Gene Conti
gconti at ncdot dot gov
(919) 733-2520

1501 MAIL SERVICE CENTER (MAIL)
RALEIGH NC 27699-1501

I should have known someone would find it before long. Please remember that polite but firm messages are more likely to be effective in expressing the public's opinion than incoherent flamefests that will just get deleted.

I 3 you Internets!

Seriously, they're investigating the guy because the report was "too good"? Since when do you need a license to be smart? It's no wonder the US is losing ground in the tech and scientific sector.

I think the Internet needs to tell the people in charge exactly how ridiculous that is. Demand an apology at the very least, if not an investigation into the people who are making these accusations.

Here's a link to get you started:

http://www.ncdot.org/

IMO, the Republican party lost its way about 20-30 years ago and has been slowly getting worse. It's no longer conservative in any way, and many of its members are now pushing religious fundamentalism under the guise of "family values", and totalitarianism masquerading as "security".

Whatever happens with the Democrats, I think it's time for a Conservative party to form and rise up out of the ashes.

I don't use a Mac regularly, so I don't know if its terminal handles the right escape codes, I'd be shocked if it didn't. Plain stock xterm has been doing this pretty much forever.

The sequence is ^[]0;string^G
(where ^[ is Escape and ^G is the bell character)
You can use that in your PS1 variable to automatically update the title every time you get a prompt. Or, depending on your shell, you can get fancy with it.

Here's some magic from my .zshrc file:

function title() {
        a=${(V)1//\%/\%\%}
        a=$(print -Pn "%40<...<$a" | tr -d "\n")
        case $TERM in
        screen)
                print -Pn "\e]0;$a @ $2\a"
                print -Pn "\ek$a\e\\" ;;
        xterm*|rxvt)
                print -Pn "\e]0;$a @ $2\a" ;;
        esac
}

case $TERM in
        screen|xterm*|rxvt)
                function precmd() {
                        title "zsh" "%m(%55<...<%~)"
                }

                function preexec() {
                        title "$1" "%m(%35<...<%~)"
                } ;;
esac

A little complicated, but it keeps my xterm title set to "command @ hostname(dir)". The %55() is just zsh magic to abbreviate where necessary.

If I'm in a screen session, it also updates the name of the screen window ("tab") to the command.

Here's an excerpt from my .screenrc that keeps things rolling when I change active windows inside of screen:

termcapinfo xterm* 'hs:ts=\E]0;:fs=\007:ds=\E]0;\007'
defhstatus "screen ^E (^Et) | $USER@^EH"

Maybe. (Open)Solaris is a bit pickier about wanting ZFS vdevs to be inside of GPT partitions. FreeBSD is layered on top of their GEOM subsystem, so it lets you put a ZFS vdev on just about anything. If it's inside of a bsdlabel partition, Solaris may not be able to find it to import the pool.

It may very well work. Just be sure to have a good backup just in case :)

[quote]Of those you listed, the only one that does crc checksumming at every transition level is ZFS.. Store it on raidz2 and never suffer from bit-rot...[/quote]

Just remember to run zpool scrub every once in a while to correct any bit errors. It's theoretically possible for them to build up over time and render blocks unreadable if you don't periodically scan and correct.

Also, high end Oracle databases typically run on either Linux for distributed (cheap) clusters, or HP-UX/Solaris on high end hardware for big monolithic installations. Oracle already has their own Linux distribution that they push pretty hard, and once they buy Sun they'll own a major commercial UNIX player, too.

Oracle has traditionally been buddy buddy with HP, but since the announcement of the Sun deal, they've started giving them the cold shoulder. While I doubt they'd drop HP-UX support entirely (there would be outrage), I can certainly see them doing things to try to push people onto Solaris or Oracle Linux, on Sun hardware, and wrapping everything up as a neat package deal.

Apohpis? Everybody knows it was Anubis who sent the asteroid.

Just cut the red wire (but they're all yellow!)

Yep, plan 3 works every time.

QFT.

Every time I've tried Linux on my desktop, one of the major things that's always driven me back to FreeBSD is the utter mess that is the Linux sound system.

Ironically enough, CoH has gotten a lot better since it was sold to NCSoft and the lead designer left to go make Champions...